To be clear I have a strong sysadmin background, so that's not the issue for me, it's the lightning specific technical stuff, and apparently the financial side that no one has been clear about. 

I just need a wallet to send and receive funds, other stuff is just for fun to support the network. 

I don't use a smart phone, I haven't found a working desktop wallet, and absolutely no KYC. So my options are severely limited. I also want to keep the scope of my footprint small and understandable, which is why I have been avoiding other alternatives that nostr supports.  

 I think https://albyhub.com/ would fit your needs well. Our goals seem aligned and this works great for me. 

 I feel like whatever they're doing I should be able to do too, unless they're doing some sort of magic based on external services, which I believe it does with the chain-state already.  

 Well you are far above me then because whatever they are doing I most certainly could not do! I felt proud that I was able to host this let alone get there from scratch! 

 zap wallet is good, it's a Neutrino/LND wallet... it needs a BIP-157 full node to connect to, i think it's strike that runs the ones that are default in zap

oh, sadly it's unmaintained for a year now: https://github.com/LN-Zap/zap-desktop

Jack Mallers built it originally